It seems hard to imagine that Mel Gibson has been absent from a leading role since 2002’s Signs. With all his torture tactics, Jew bashing and public lameness preceding his acting abilities recently, news about Gibson and his image doesn’t stray far from our minds. But he has such veracity in his acting and impressive screen presence that we can easily buy into anything he plays (even with a Boston accent), and Edge of Darkness is a movie that Gibson can ease into. All he needs is a gun and a reason. Everybody else better watch out!

Partially penned by William Monahan (The Departed) and directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale), Edge of Darkness conjures up similarities to other movies of its kind. Detective Thomas Craven (Gibson) of the Boston police department has a really smart daughter (Bojana Novakovic), who works as a research assistant for a company called Northmoor. The benefits include top-tier experience in weapons manufacturing coupled with a severance package featuring a shotgun blast to the stomach. You may remember Russell Crowe being harassed by Big Tobacco in The Insider, but Northmoor is much more aggressive about their confidentiality clauses.

The general conceit of the movie could be interpreted as the futility of exposing injustice, especially in the hands of big business, for Northmoor, sitting atop an ominous hill, has tentacles everywhere. At one point someone says, “cases like this are never solved,” but that doesn’t stop Craven from digging deep into the company’s sordid affairs. He digs so deep in fact that you wonder how Northmoor has time to conduct any “real business,” what with all the murders and such. But where does that leave Mel? He’s not the kind of actor to sit and complain to a Senate committee. He will when his aggressiveness stops, however. Craven is not a renegade cop. In fact, he’s supremely honest and well respected. Campbell does a fine job of avoiding that stigma of edginess, partly because the movie never gives any evidence of him ever having been labeled as “difficult.” And if there is one thing true about Gibson’s talent, it’s his ability to blend raw tenacity with tenderness — The Man Without a Face, Ransom, Mad Max and The Bounty. That’s not to say that Edge of Darkness skimps on action. There is plenty of it. The death count, like Monahan’s The Departed, is copious; however, conflict is resolved in an act of total catharsis, in a way a man settles a personal vendetta with people who were once deemed untouchable.

Like John Wayne in The Shooting, Gibson does a lot of acting with facial expressions rather than physicality. His face contorts into sculptures like an angry piece of rawhide, which gives credit to all the close-ups of it looking austere. And his stentorian voice, along with Ray Winstone’s (who is surprisingly nimble when it comes to sneaking up on people) favors a lot of threatening proclamations. Most of the characters have a propensity for speaking in statements with awesome sign-off lines rather than normal speech. If I could leave a foe stewing over the words, “I’m the guy with nothing to lose… so fasten your seatbelt,” without sounding like an imbecile, I’d feel equally matched with any weapons firm, but a gun and a badge probably helps with self-esteem.

Quin Benzel needs some coins for the meter. He can be reached at quin@vanvoice.com